Why “Serial” Can Feel So Discomfiting (It’s Not White Privilege)

“It’s not exactly in the racial dynamics, and not only in the way that Koenig tells the story. It has to do instead with the psychological tourism that comes in the aftermath of a crime, the license that everyone (Koenig, her audience, but also the cops and prosecutors and judges and Hae and Adnan’s classmates) feels to gaze into the lives of both victims and the accused and to wonder about the extent of what people are capable.”